May 24, 2008

EU commissioner gets stricter on euro readiness

TALLINN - Siim Kallas, Vice-President of the European Commission met with Estonian reporters on Wednesday, said that assesment of interested countries' euro readiness could become stricter.

In his comment, Kallas referred to Slovenia and Slovakia. Slovenia adopted the euro from the beginning of last year, but the rate of inflation has been considerably higher there than in other countries using the euro.

According to Eurostat the annual inflation of the whole euro zone was 3.3 percent, while in Slovenia the figure was 6.2 percent.

Slovakia also recently received the European Commission's recommendation to switch to the euro, but the European Central Bank has warned that rising prices could create problems also there.

Germans are critical of the enlargement of the euro zone at present, Kallas said. He added that the idea of the common European currency had been to ensure stability of prices.

Kallas said that the numerical criteria of the adoption of the euro wouldn't change but added that there were other arguments in addition to them.

Kallas said that it was a problem that Estonia had still not managed to adopt the euro. If Estonia were using the euro, the country would have one worry less, he said.

Kallas' stance to parallel use of the euro was defensive. He doubted whether Estonia would win anything by it and added that rather it would damage the country's reputation.